


Past and Future

by Deannie



Category: Everwood
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-06-23
Updated: 2003-06-23
Packaged: 2017-12-18 09:25:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/878251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deannie/pseuds/Deannie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Delia remembers...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Past and Future

"When was the last time you cleaned this place out?"  


Delia Brown smiled at the indignant cry. She looked at her friend Kate across the attic, rubbing her hands on her jeans to rid them of the worst of the cobwebs. "Probably when we moved in."  


"Well I think there ought to be a law!"  


"I think we ought to torch the place." The new voice was Delia's brother Ephram. He had mounted the steps to the attic and leaned against the banister, watching them both with a smile. "Grab the insurance money and run."  


"Are you kidding me?" Delia shot back, grinning as she fished an old plastic game controller out of one the many boxes that littered the floor. "We could make a fortune selling all this stuff!"  


Ephram was poking around at the junk piled on top of a disused dresser in the corner. With a wicked smirk, he extracted an object, and held it out to her. "Even this?"  


Like a snake's head, Delia's hand darted out to grab her brother's prize. "Leave that alone! Where did you find it?"  


He tried not to laugh at her outrage. "Right here on your old dresser," he replied, pointing to the moldering old pile of wood. "Look, you obviously didn't miss it, did you? I mean--"  


"What is it?" Kate asked, intrigued despite herself. She stood up from her place in the corner and came to stand behind Delia, who had stationed herself in front of a full-length--and very grimy--mirror.  


With the sort of reverence reserved for fine jewels, Delia reshaped the heavily squashed baseball cap. It had the emblem of the Colorado Avalanche hockey team emblazoned on it, and she stretched it experimentally.  


"It won't fit you any more," Ephram said quietly, the teasing amusement in his tone turning slowly to worry as Delia's face darkened in the glass. "You were a kid when--" He broke off in shock as she stretched the adjustable strap in the back and slid the dusty old cap on over her long hair.  


"That's weird," he said quietly, looking at her reflection and meeting its eyes. "You look..."  


"Sixteen again," she whispered. She stared at herself in the mirror, and time seemed to slip back a decade...  


   


> "Hey, shrimp!"  
> 
> 
> She was used to it by now. Bright Abbott had been giving her a hard time ever since she turned twelve and began to shoot up like a weed. She was already taller than Ephram--which, Bright pointed out meanly, wasn't saying much--and she felt like she'd keep growing forever. The fact that her hips and breasts seemed to be keeping perfect time with her bones didn't mollify her in the least.  
> 
> 
> "Back from school already, huh?" she asked, trying for a bored expression. Of course, she'd known the second Bright got back to Everwood. It was one of the benefits of a small town.  
> 
> 
> But then, Bright was a benefit all his own.  
> 
> 
> " _Why_ are you always wearing that thing!?" he asked, flinging a hand at the brim of her hat, knocking it from her head for quite possibly the thousandth time in the baseball cap's life. He seemed to think he deserved the honor, seeing that he'd given it to her himself, three years before.  
> 
> 
> Delia bent to pick it up, feeling the old familiar flip-flop in her heart as Bright reached out to help her straighten. Bolder now, as she matured, she risked catching his gaze and murmured. "Because _you_ gave it to me."  
> 
> 
> The kiss was entirely unexpected--if long dreamed of--and the summer's dalliance was sweeter than any fantasy she'd had in the years since she'd moved to Everwood. She'd loved Bright from the start, but she would always remain amazed that he had loved her, too.  
> 

   


"So what happened?" Kate asked quietly, her gaze shifting from Delia's downcast eyes to Ephram's suddenly shuddered visage. "I mean, why aren't you..."  


Delia took off the hat, her eyes still on the ground, and Ephram took it from her gently, placing it back on the dresser, though it sat neat and safe now, not crushed beneath the weight of years. Delia's voice seemed just the opposite, as she whispered her answer.  


"On his way back to school, Bright was... hit by a drunk driver. Killed instantly." She gave a shuddering breath, trying to put the memory away, where it belonged.  


Ephram started to reach out to his sister, but Kate got there first, wrapping her friend in strong arms that were gentle as they comforted. It took the younger Brown child only minutes to regain her composure, and she offered them both a tentative smile as she straightened her shoulders.  


"This isn't about the past, is it?" she asked briskly.  


"Well, actually..." Ephram began, a grin breaking out as his sister recovered her good cheer. It was an old pain, after all, and she had new joys to contend with. "It kind of is."  


Delia tossed an old sweater at him, sending him into a coughing fit as it hit him with a face full of dust. "Not _that_ past," she clarified. "Now come on! We've got a day to find this thing before Nonny gets here--and we _don't_ want to go to her empty-handed, do we?"  
   


It took a good deal less than a day to find what they were looking for, neatly sealed for safe-keeping at the bottom of a box simply marked "Julia." Ephram and Delia's grandmother appeared the next day, and greeted both of them with hugs. Their father she greeted with a smile, though it held a warmth that he had never really seemed to expect after his wife's death--and certainly not after her father's.  


"Now, let's see what we have, shall we?" Nonny demanded briskly. "Come on! If we're to get this ready, we'd better move fast!"  


Fast was the word, Delia thought with a shudder of glee as her grandmother worked her mother's wedding dress carefully out of it's bag, muttering about the three inches Delia had on her mom. Stuart would be home in a week--the wedding in ten days time. It had all felt so slap-dash, and yet, Delia couldn't wait for the day itself. She'd been waiting for it from the moment her family had driven into Everwood.  


She'd just never realized that the man she'd been waiting for hadn't been  
Bright Abbott at all, but a surly young boy who'd only needed a friend...  
and who had named himself "Magilla."

* * *  
The End


End file.
